God of Empathy

Breathe in: God I am overwhelmed
Breathe out: God sit with me

God,
I confess that I have been cursed
with your Holy Spirit
I have your empathy in spades

Her whispers echo in my ear
I feel worry 
for the children
for my trans* and nonbinary family
for all those who are black and brown

whose birth, citizenship and being
are being tossed about 
and trying to be erased
like words on a page

Holy Spirit
How is it that the same Spirit
that comes and teaches us to witness
also encourages, inspires
and consoles?

God almighty
I confess
my breath catches when I 
feel our relationships
with other nations
disintegrating
when I see signs of hate
shrugged off or joked about

Pneuma–
I confess, I need your help
to breathe in
to breathe out
because I confess that sometimes 
remembering to breathe freely
is an act of rebellion

Jesus Christ
I remember all of your short actions
that were so disruptive 
most of them were 
listening
and calling people by their
chosen
name

Walk with me
walk with us
as we do the same
help us to 
listen closely to one another
and to call one another by name

God of empathy
breath
listening
and Name

Be with us
in this time of Trial
I pray
Amen

Feel free to use/adapt/share with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta “KatyandtheWord”

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Author: katyandtheword

Pastor Katy has enjoyed ministry at New Covenant since 2010, where the church has solidified its community focus. She now works at Capital CFO plus as the Non Profit Director. All opinions expressed on this blog are her own and do not reflect those of Capital CFO plus. Prior to that she studied both Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She also served as an Assistant Chaplain at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and as the Christian Educational Coordinator at Bethany Presbyterian at Bloomfield, NJ. She is an writer and is published in Enfleshed, Sermonsuite, Presbyterian's today and Outlook. She writes prayers, liturgy, poems and public theology and is pursuing her doctorate in ministry in Creative Write and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. She enjoys working within and connecting to the community, is known to laugh a lot during service, and tells as many stories as possible. Pastor Katy loves reading Science Fiction and Fantasy, theater, arts and crafts, music, playing with children and sunshine, and continues to try to be as (w)holistically Christian as possible. "Publisher after publisher turned down A Wrinkle in Time," L'Engle wrote, "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was too difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adult's book, anyhow?" The next year it won the prestigious John Newbery Medal. Tolkien states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one.[66] Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times.

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